


One Second

by maybeificry



Category: Tegan and Sara (Band)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2017-03-30
Packaged: 2018-06-10 10:07:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6952243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybeificry/pseuds/maybeificry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>THE CON deconstructed into a story as we watch the girls create their 2007 album. Each chapter is explicitly inspired by direct lyrics from it's corresponding song. AKA The novel the girls and Emy always imagined The Con to be. This shit is fucked up</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I. I Was Married

It was too bright outside, it was early, it was warm. It felt good in a settled and safe way, and Emy’s kiss when they signed the papers showered her face in that soft, warm love. Emy told Sara she looked good leaned against the stone wall of the building, ivy crawling to her right. She took a photo of Sara there. When the camera clicked, Sara’s stomach tied in nostalgic knots, and she was falling, falling, falling…..

Sara gasped and woke up in the dark apartment she shared with Emy, whose warm sleepy body was suffocating her. She squinted at her alarm clock- 2 a.m. She groaned. The crickets chirped outside.  
Why had she dreamt of the day they signed for partnership?  
Tegan wasn’t there.  
She felt dizzy. She pushed herself up from the bed and headed slowly for the bathroom. Her half-asleep state washed her brain with thoughts she’d normally keep in the vault, locked up safe so she couldn’t think about them, like the last time she touched Tegan’s face, or the last time she saw them both in a mirror together. She wondered how different they would look now. Sara had a new haircut, an even more exaggerated mullet now. She knew Tegan would think it was edgy and hip of her, she might even make fun of her. 

Sara realized she’d not made it to the bathroom but she found herself in her closet with her clothes and recording equipment. It seemed so odd that this place had become home to her. Home without Tegan. She couldn’t believe it was only a matter of weeks before she’d be in the studio, recording music with her sister again, with a camera crew and her girlfriend watching them. She felt a wince of regret over some of the exposing demos she’d been sending Tegan and Chris.

She pulled out her phone. are you up tee, she typed and hit send. She sat down in the closet and closed the door with a soft sigh. To her left she realized was an old duffel bag of hers, from when she first moved to Montreal. It reeked of her old life. She opened it up and pulled out a coat Tegan used to wear all the time- Sara used to wear it too, actually. She nuzzled the coat to her nose, breathing in to try and smell the traces of Tegan. Long gone. Still, she put the jacket on and felt a little more safe, a little less like Montreal was going to swallow her whole. 

When Sara shoved her hands in the pockets of Tegan’s jacket she found some loose change and crumbs, of course, her dirty sister hadn’t cleaned the jacket probably ever. Her hand found something that felt like a straw in the right pocket and pulled it out- a half smoked joint! Sara’s mouth formed a soft smile over her crooked teeth.  
Oh Tee.  
She knew she had to smoke it, had to put her lips around the same spot her sister had, who knows how long ago. Tegan could’ve even have had a shaved head then. The weed might be too old to even have effect. She didn’t care. She just wanted to feel nearer to the girl she used to be when she lived a room over from Tegan, when they snuck into each other’s beds every other night… when they were still the same person. Before Sara ripped them in half. 

There must be a lighter in this jacket, Sara thought, and patted around the pockets a few times. She felt a lump in the inside pocket and alas, the light she needed. Right next to where Tegan’s heart was beating, underneath this jacket, young Tegan. Sara’s eyes watered. She was glad Emy hadn’t noticed her out of bed, as this surely would be a sight to see, her shaky hands trying to light an ancient crumbling joint while she cried for her loss of limb.

By the time Sara had finished the joint and the closet was full of stale smoke, she had worked out how many outfits she could fit into her few suitcases and duffel bags for the time they would spend in Portland. She had to think a lot about what she would wear, knowing that Tegan would be watching her every move, analyzing every single way she has changed. Then, later, when they would fight, Tegan would remind her of all the ways she’s changed, how she isn’t like her anymore, she’s like Emy. They weren't the same anymore. Sara needed Tegan to be upset about that. She liked when she would see Tegan after months, wearing new clothes she bought without Tegan, listening to new bands she saw without Tegan. She knew how crazy that would drive Tegan, how much stronger Sara would seem than her. Her eyes started to water again and she wiped them on the sleeve of Tegan’s jacket. 

It had to have been about an hour since her dream had ripped her from sleep, and still Tegan hadn’t responded to her text. In a flash of weakness, she held down ‘1’ on her keypad to speed dial her sister. When she didn’t pick up right away, she figured Tegan must be asleep, since it was midnight in Vancouver. “Hey this is Tegan,” Sara’s heart dropped at her sister’s voice on the machine. She hadn’t corresponded with Tegan through anything other than e-mail for a couple of weeks. “I’m probably either recording or sleeping. I’ll call back maybe,” BEEP. Sara grinned and snickered a little at Tegan’s cute voicemail message. Then she realized she was still on the phone, being recorded, so she panicked and hung up. Fuck, she was high. 

Sara laid her head against the wall of the closet and missed her sister. When the nostalgia had almost consumed her, she lashed out and hit the wall with her fist, let out one small sob. Shit, did Emy hear that? She sat still for a moment, but the apartment was silent. A few pieces of paper fell elegantly from the top of her closet, dislodged when she had hit the wall. A photo fell right into her lap and screamed in her face.

It was a photo of them together, they must have been just barely 18, both of them moody and sad, their hair spiky and short. Back when they had first started to love each other not like sisters, back when they had first started to hate each other. It’s almost as if the two feelings had started simultaneously. It’s almost as if they had intentionally started a band just to force themselves to be around each other so they couldn’t push each other away.

Sara had figured out a way to do that anyhow.

Sara sobbed and let her tears fall onto the faces of these twins she didn’t recognize anymore. She hated crying. She remembered taking the picture, how electric and passionate their love was at the time, before she met Emy. Before So Jealous. Sure, there were other girls around back then, but Tegan was always number one. They had spent 20 years in the deepest, most embedded relationship Sara could imagine, and now here she was, thousands of miles away in a closet her sister had never even been inside. Sara had spent so much time dulling the passion that now her heart felt like a very heavy kite, pulled by a very long string. Tegan held the handle of the kite, down on earth, in Vancouver.

Her mind was full of fog and weed. She got up on shaky legs and stumbled from the closet. Emy was still asleep, but she’d changed positions, so she was restless. Sara tried to conceal her sniffles and made her way blindly in the dark to the bathroom. She locked the door behind her and instantly let a sob rip through her chest. 

Why couldn’t she let go?  
She was so good at pretending, but the minute she picked up her guitar, it all came pouring out- the shadows.  
She looked at her tear streaked face in the mirror. It was dark, she hadn’t bothered to turn the light on in the bathroom, but the streetlight outside filtered through her window was enough to show the outline of her jaw. Headlights of passing cars cast moving orbs across her nose and cheeks. She placed her sweating palms against the cool marble of the sink. She took several deep breaths, trying to contain what she knew was building inside her.

Another car drove by outside, but this time when the headlights reflected on Sara’s face, the light caught something that made Sara’s stomach flutter. Tegan’s labret. She saw it on her face in the mirror. She reached up to her own face to touch under her lip and found nothing there. Her reflection did the same, but as another car passed, this one with it’s brights on, her reflection smiled back at her- the gummy, pierced smile of her sister.  
 Sara’s heart pounded and her blood rushed to her clit. She stared intently into the mirror, watching her angular cheeks soften slightly, her mullet replaced with Tegan’s choppy cut from when they were touring So Jealous. Heat flushed Sara’s face and collarbone. The look on Tegan’s face was one she was very familiar with- her coy, smug, ‘I’m gonna fuck you’ face, completed only by her slitted eyes and a bite to her lower lip. Sara’s knees felt weak. Fuck. She shook her head twice, three times. She blinked and rubbed her eyes to try to stop her mind from doing this, but her reflection was still Tegan when she opened them. 

I know you miss me, Sara, she heard Tegan say. I know you think you’re all *evolved* and shit, but the truth is… Tegan reached her hands up to the edge of the mirror and hung her fingers over the edge. Oh god, her perfect, tiny fingers. Sara swallowed, her eyes half-lidded. Tegan snorted and smiled again. You miss fucking me, don’t you Sasa?

“Shit,” Sara whimpered, her hips unconsciously jutting against the sink. She couldn’t unlock her eyes from Tegan’s face in the mirror. She knew how insane she was for thinking these things and it made her cringe. She felt more tears welling up inside her and she bit her lip to hold them back.

Remember that night, when we played Cat’s Cradle, when I told you your jokes were bad and that I’d beat your ass? She laughed her perfect laugh, raised her eyebrows like an asshole. Sara narrowed her eyes in response. Tegan’s smile was languid and she bit her lip again, letting Sara remember what had happened that night in the alley behind the bar after the show. Emy could have caught us back there by that dumpster, your hand in my pants, and your vice grip on my hair. What would she say if she knew where you are right now?

Sara grunted and shoved her hand in her pants. She was soaking wet, spilling down her boxer shorts. She saw it all pass by in the reflection of the mirror, the memories of that night were burned in her brain as if it had been done by the cigarette Tegan was smoking. 

Sara had ripped it from her hand, still lit, and threw it to the wet gravel in the alley. Tegan had barely had time to make an irritated sound before Sara had her hands wrapped around her sister’s throat.

“You’re such a fucking bitch Tegan,” Sara sputtered to her reflection. Tegan laughed, so beautiful, her crinkled eyes, her labret. Tegan was winding a string around a stick, faster and faster, and Sara was so worried, she knew what would happen if Tegan wound the string too tight, she knew where that string was tied. It was a kite string.

Sara wanted so badly to reach out and touch her sister, smell her, taste her. She pulled her hand, covered with herself, from her pants to reach out to her. She needed her other half. It was missing. If she could just break through whatever this was in the way-

“Sara?” Emy’s sleepy voice came drifting through the door with a soft tap tap. 

Sara blinked and Tegan was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The picture that fell into Sara's lap: https://67.media.tumblr.com/6a46c5d2367a5a2192759add806063bf/tumblr_nr3fvaSdp31r02zv9o1_500.jpg


	2. II. Relief Next To Me

Sara stared at the ceiling, Emy snuggled at her side, for what felt like hours. The lava lamp in the corner cast glittery shapes like stars across the ceiling. When she finally felt the weightless relief of sleep, she dreamt of Vancouver, young Vancouver, young Tegan.

Sara was a drop of water that caressed the softer sides of Tegan’s sweet, young face when they filmed the video for Living Room- she shivered and she was in backseat of their tour van, with spiky hair and loose clothes, waiting while their friends pumped gas and got burgers at a rest stop. Tegan watched until no one was looking, then stole a kiss from Sara, her hand warm on Sara’s face. Their lips were the same. Tegan hummed and it made Sara’s head spin. Her face burned red and her stomach turned, but Tegan was there so it made it okay. 

The door of the van slid open and she was at a party, 17, her hair long, it reeked of weed in the house. The walls were warm and the music was nice, there were plants and pictures of her friends on the walls as her dream pushed her into the bathroom where Tegan was calling for her.

Tegan was crying, she got too drunk, smoked a little too much. Sara comforted her, put her skinny arms around her sister and held her and told her she was okay. Tegan kissed Sara, so sweet and innocent, and Sara beat the shit out of her. She had to explain to her mother later why Tegan’s lip was split. But then she was 15, watching Tegan eat popcorn on their mom’s couch, wanting so badly to know how the salt would taste on Tegan’s lips. She kissed her and Tegan slapped her across the face. 

“But we used to when we were kids,” Sara cried, because she didn’t know any better yet. 

Tegan cried and Sara was in her childhood bedroom suddenly, the first bedroom she had without Tegan, tucked in her bed as lightning cracked violently outside her window, the trees tapping on the panes like wicked fingers. She could hear Tegan crying across the hall, so she called to her softly. She knew Tegan would hear her. And soon enough, she heard the pitter patter of tiny Tegan feet running across the hall to hop into bed and snuggle up to her little sister. Sara held her and comforted her, wiped the tears from under her eyes. 

Sara pulled the blanket over her head and under the blanket was Portland, she was in an imaginary version of the studio they were supposed to record at in a few weeks. She slowly approached the sound booth, drawn in by the grain in the wood on the door, and pulled the handle. There, waiting, guitar in hand, was not her sister- but Emy. She smiled at Sara and gestured to the guitar next to her.   “These songs were for me, right?” Emy asked.

Sara woke up crying. She glanced around her quiet apartment, her face covered in tears, her arms tangled around the body next to her. The body soothed her cries, and she thought for a moment it might be Tegan, but it was Emy, she could smell her.

Her phone buzzed near her ear. The morning sun had started to stream in through the windows, but just barely, so it must have been early. Who would be calling this early?

She rolled over to squint at the name on the front of the phone and felt her stomach drop when she read the name- Tegan. She scrambled from the bed, untangled her arms from Emy’s and her legs from their fluffy navy comforter, grabbed her phone and stumbled out of the room. 

She passed the bathroom on her way to the kitchen and her reflection caught her eye- still Sara, not Tegan. She looked exhausted, her eyes puffy from involuntary crying, clad in only a white crew neck and boxer briefs, her scrawny arm holding what felt like the heaviest phone in the world to her face. Her stomach turned as she mentally prepared herself to hear Tegan’s voice. 

It felt like a dream as she shuffled into the kitchen, her phone still vibrating from the call. She knew it would go to voicemail soon, so she picked up, but she didn’t say anything so she wouldn’t wake Emy. She grabbed her winter coat from the hook by the back door and slipped out to find solitude on the balcony. It was freezing outside, the December chill billowing through Sara’s long bangs. 

Tegan still hadn’t said anything over the phone, but Sara still hadn’t said hello. Sara could feel it hurting them both inside just to be connected over the phone. She felt as if the phone were the most dangerous weapon she had ever held. 

She heard a sob over the line. “Please, Sara, are you there?” Tegan’s voice came, small and swallowed by the whip of wind around Sara, gusting through the branches of leafless trees around her balcony. Her sister’s voice was a weight on Sara’s chest. She could tell Tegan had been crying. “I’m so sorry if I woke you, but…” Tegan sniffled. Sara imagined her soft cheeks covered in tears, her mouth and nose red from her rubbing her face. She always did that when she was anxious. “Please, Sar, I woke up from a fucking terrible nightmare and, I know I’m not supposed to be calling you for anything other than the band, but I just..” Tegan took a breath. Sara bit her lip until she spoke again. Say it. “…I fucking need you, Sara. You were right, okay?” Sara heard Tegan stifle a sob into her pillow.

Sara saw red. She could practically feel the anger instantly consume her, as it always did when Tegan broke the rules after they had finally decided on some. Her cheeks and neck flushed, the muscles in her face contorted. Was she crying?

“How fucking dare you,” Sara cut through Tegan’s sobs with iciness beyond compare. “I have been working my ass off for this band, I have been stressed, Emy’s citizenship is constantly in question, and you have the audacity to call me and tell me you need me?! After you-“ Sara didn’t dare say it. She shook her head vigorously. “You fucking need me? I NEED YOU, Tegan,” Sara’s voice broke as she cried into the night. “But I needed you a long fucking time ago, and you have to make everything about you. You fucking selfish, fucking- insecure, miserable, self wallowing bitch! You make everything so fucking hard for me! I just want to live Tegan, please, just let me live and be happy!” 

She shouldn’t be this mean. She didn’t mean the things she was saying. Her sister sobbed uncontrollably over the phone. Tegan had only needed relief. Sara knew her sister had been telling the truth about the bad dream. After all, she’d had the same one. They knew what it meant. 

A light flipped on in the kitchen and Sara widened her eyes at the curtained window above the sink. Emy must have heard her. She instantly shut her mouth and listened to Tegan cry. It horrified her.

“Sa- Sara,” Tegan cried her name through her sobs. “I -hic- love -hic- you, Sasa,” she was broken. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered through her cries, over and over and over. Her voice was muffled. Sara was worried she would drown herself in her own tears. The thought sent panic ripping through Sara’s chest.

Sara heard shuffling from the kitchen, so she quickly hid against the wall so Emy couldn’t see her from the window. She knew Emy wouldn’t mind her talking to Tegan on the phone. After all, Tegan was her sister. But Emy wasn’t stupid like other girls had been before. She knew so much more than Sara could ever tell her, she knew things Sara had never been able to put into words before. Emy still loved Sara anyhow. Sara felt guilty, guilty, guilty.

The light switched off in the kitchen and Sara breathed a sigh of relief into the soft early morning air. Tegan was screaming at this point. If they had been talking in person, Tegan would be hitting Sara by now- one of the many reasons why Sara had moved so far away from her. “Sara! Sara, fucking answer me,” Tegan yelled. “I know you’re there.” But Sara couldn't help it. She got lost in her brain sometimes. The real world wasn’t even there.

“Please, Sasa.”

“…I’m sorry Tegan,” she finally said, firm but soft. “I had a bad dream too, I wish I could be there to comfort you.”

“Really?”

Sara nodded over and over, tears spilling silently from her eyes. “Yes, yes really,” she squeezed the bridge of her nose between her fingers. She was telling the truth. “Do you uh,” she cleared her throat. “Do you remember when we were little, and you’d come to my room and get in my bed when it was thundering?”

Tegan laughed. It was small, and sounded very far away, but it sent jolts of electricity through the tips of Sara’s fingers. The corners of Sara’s mouth curved up so slightly, she couldn’t help it.

“Yeah,” Tegan sniffed. She was quiet for a moment. “…Have you been thinking about me, Sara?” Her voice belonged to an entirely different Tegan when she asked that sentence. The lustful, needing, wanting Tegan that craved Sara like a starved animal. 

Sara swallowed. “You know I have.”

“You could call me,” Tegan stated sadly. She seemed to be very cautious in everything she said now that she had Sara’s attention. “You only ever send me demos lately. It feels like…” she sighed. “Like I don’t even know you right now.”

The wind outside howled past Sara as the iciness between them began to freeze again. She shook her head to herself. “I can’t talk to you, Tegan.” Saying it always made Sara’s stomach turn. She knew it was the only way the two of them could end this conversation and go on, without the mess. She had to take the blame. Tegan was sobbing again.

“Why not?”

Sara took a deep breath of cold, Montreal air, and watched her hot breath unfurl in the air as she released it. “You know what we are.”

 

Sara returned to her bed, warm still from Emy’s body, which had returned from the kitchen. Or perhaps Sara had only imagined it. Her eyes were wide, she felt as if she had just been tortured with electric shock. Emy lolled her arm behind her to touch Sara sleepily. She mumbled a question regarding Sara getting up so early, and Sara explained softly that Tegan called about a phone interview they were going to do.

Emy didn’t say anything, and Sara didn’t know if she had fallen back asleep or if she didn’t want to know anything else.

Sara stared at her phone until her alarm went off to start the day.


	3. III. The Con

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sorry mom

It was midnight. It always felt like it was midnight to Tegan. She’d ended up at a bar again tonight, her fifth night in a row drinking. She blamed her friends who’d invited her out tonight, the same ones she was now ignoring in favor of her broody drunken thoughts. She slammed the cocktail she had just finished gulping down on the bar and the ice rattled around violently. The sound reminded her of how her labret piercing rattled against Sara’s teeth nights ago in vans, hotels, tents. God, it had been so long. She was drowning. Drowning herself, at least.

She smiled to herself, a gummy, spitty smile, her eyelids heavy with alcohol. She shook her head and snickered at herself. Shame on her for thinking about her sister. Fuck Sara. So what if Tegan had spent every night getting pissed in the same bars, playing games with the same straight girl over and over again? She grunted and snuck a glance at Lindsey, the gorgeous photographer she’d met in LA, drunk on the dance floor. 

So what if she had just bought a massive house despite having no one to live in it with? Fuck all of them. They would see. She would just drink and drink and drink until she would stop thinking and then Sara would be so sad, she’d understand all the songs Tegan had been sending her this year, she would see.

Tegan had just received the e-mail that very morning confirming the dates she and Sara were to spend tracking their new album in Portland. January seemed only minutes away. Tegan was jumping out of her skin to see Sara. She always felt like a different person when Sara wasn’t around, like she was missing something, like she was an imposter. It felt as if all the moments she spent away from Sara were just pretend, just living life on a different planet. Nothing mattered unless Sara saw.

Her sister’s delicate, low giggle ghosted through Tegan’s inebriated skull and it sounded like home. She rubbed her eyes and cheeks. She hadn’t seen her sister in- she shivered when she realized she couldn’t even remember how long. Would Sara look different now? She felt the dull ache of a phantom limb missing from her body. Tegan bounced her left leg against the bar stool and traced her finger around the rim of her empty glass. She imagined Sara doing the same thing, on the other side of Canada. 

She slipped off the bar stool, ready to go home and wallow alone. She had tried her best tonight, had given her very best effort to forget Sara. It was a never ending battle, it seemed. She felt as if they’d hit the reset button when they toured So Jealous, and she hadn’t made any progress since things fell apart at the end of the last tour before their break. The mere thought of being back in a recording studio with her sister sent her mind in spirals. 

As she left the bar her friends tried to stop her to chat, but she brushed them off with an easy ‘I’m drunk’ look and a limp wave of her hand. They all must have thought she’d smoked or drank too much tonight, but really, she was smoking and drinking this much every night. It was okay though, she would practice her sainthood while on tour with Sara. She liked to be good like Sara when she was around her.

Tegan muttered goodbye to a few acquaintances and gave a nod to a disappointed Lindsey, who had probably been expecting her to dance and flirt endlessly with her as she had been the past week. Lindsey had flown up to Vancouver for a photoshoot, and had started to familiarize herself with Tegan’s stomping grounds, literally and figuratively. Not tonight, something whispered within Tegan. The bell over the door of the bar chimed as she left.

The crisp, late December chill of Vancouver washing over Tegan as she hit the wet streets should have sobered her up, but the cold only made her feel feverish. Vancouver streets didn’t feel the same without Sara. 

Her stroll was brisk, her black hoodie pulled over her ears. She’d taken to constantly wearing black hoodies lately, dark jeans always, everything dark. The black dye in her hair had washed out after the So Jealous tours, but she was waiting to get her hair cut. She couldn’t get it cut without Sara’s help.

She shoved an earbud in her bent ear and smashed the play button to shuffle her iPod, hoping to drown out her singular footsteps echoing down the boulevard. She skipped through the first few songs- geez, she needed to clean out her iTunes library- when the first few notes of a hauntingly recognizable track assailed her ears. It was the original demo of a song Sara had sent her before they recorded So Jealous. Tegan remembered the first time she listened to the song, listened to her sister’s aching voice sing of needing to move, yeah move, and that she couldn’t take it. Then she moved 3,000 miles away from Tegan.

But this Tegan, this older Tegan with tattoos and hoodies and a huge house, couldn’t hear the song quite the same way. She had once felt guilty about this song, she thought she’d done something to make Sara so sad she would write a song with such agonizing pain. Now, it felt like Sara was telling her to move on.

Tegan shook her head furiously and felt the dangerous tugs of a sob pull her lips into a frown. Sara loved her. Tegan knew that. Sara didn’t want Tegan to stop loving her. Tegan knew these things were truer than anything else they could put between them.

She ripped out her headphone to halt Sara’s siren song in her ear and stomped up the steps to her lonely, cold house. The moment she swung open the heavy front door, she was in pieces.

She sobbed as she stripped herself naked, sobbed as she ran a bath, sobbed while pulling the tequila from her freezer. She drank for hours in the bath tub, gritted her teeth until her jaw hurt. 

Tegan would fucking move on, Sara would see. Then she would know just how badly Tegan hurt when Sara left her for Montreal. 

Tegan’s head spun, her house swirls of purple and shadows. It was glaringly obvious as she stood at the foot of her bed, dripping wet, naked and shivering, that she was alone. She crawled into bed to cocoon herself in blankets and pillows. In her drunken state she drifted in and out of sleep immediately, and with her last gasp before slipping into a dream she flung her arm out at her bedside table to set an alarm on her phone. She squinted at the blurry screen until a notification came into focus: a missed call from Sara, about two hours ago, when she had been in the bath.  
Furious, Tegan threw her phone against the wall. She was unsatisfied and unsurprised when the phone didn’t break, just sat there silently, as if it hadn’t just hurt her. As if that wasn’t the first time Sara had called her in months. The alcohol pushed her past the edge of sleep before she could wonder what Sara wanted.

So move…

Tegan was laying on her therapist's couch. Where was Sara? Her therapist wasn’t saying anything. It was cold, so freezing, everything looked grey. She looked down and her foot was bouncing in time with her rapid heartbeat. Is this what a panic attack felt like? Where was Sara?

Suddenly she was underwater, the couch in her therapists office now a bathtub filled with freezing water. Tegan thrashed her arms and legs but she couldn’t get out. She was breathing in water, drowning herself. Where was Sara???? She needed Sara! She couldn’t die here. What would happen to Sara if she died? 

She blinked her eyes open underwater and saw her therapist now had a black sock mask covering his face. She felt the horrible realization rip through her chest- he knew about her feelings for Sara. 

She screamed underwater, loud enough to pull her body awake, shivering and naked, tangled in her white sheets and blankets. She cried in her bed, and when her head started pounding so hard she couldn’t see straight, she broke down and retrieved her phone from the floor across her room.

Open phone. Press and hold ‘1’ on the speed dial. Raise phone to ear. Everything felt foreign to Tegan, the darkness of the room around her a cloak of anonymity. The anticipation throbbed in her skull with the sound of the phone ringing, that horrid waiting sound, she hated it. It sounded so ugly to her and when it stopped, all she wanted was her sister’s irritated voice to soothe her- but it didn’t come. There was silence on the other end. 

Tegan took her phone from her ear to glance at the screen. Sara had definitely picked up, the call had gone through. Maybe there was a bad connection, Tegan thought, until she heard the sound of a door open and shut, then what she thought was wind outside. It hurt her even more knowing Sara was there and wouldn’t say anything to her. Part of her got mad that Sara would be so dramatic, but she felt her lips pull down with the threat of tears when she realized Sara hadn’t anything at first because she was in bed. With Emy.

“Please, Sara, are you there?” Tegan said, trying not to sound too pitiful or whiny, but she was bad at masking how she felt with Sara. She knew it was a fruitless cause. If Tegan pretended not to need her, Sara would see right through her facade. 

Tegan bit her lip. “I’m so sorry if I woke you, but…” she tried not to sniffle and failed. She rubbed her hand aggressively across her eyes and nose. “Please, Sar, I woke up from a fucking terrible nightmare and, I know I’m not supposed to be calling you for anything other than the band, but I just..” she took a breath. She couldn’t say it. Tegan had set the rules for them before they went on break. Sara had told her it wouldn’t work, that Tegan would come crawling back to her, they were like magnets. And here she was, doing just that. She shuddered. “…I fucking need you, Sara. You were right, okay?” Hearing herself say it out loud made her sob, so she tried to muffle her cries in her pillow.

Her other half did exactly what Tegan expected her to. She assailed her sister, annihilated her with word so cutting and cold, Tegan could have never said those things to Sara. Everything Sara said was right, she had been the one to call it off this time, she had been the one to neglect the band to piss off Sara and take her attention from Emy, so she didn’t argue, just sobbed uncontrollably and listened to her sister clobber her. She loved it. She felt the slickness between her legs and the butterflies in her stomach. Her sister’s attention made her wild, and this was the only kind she could get right now.

Tegan told her sister that she loved her, she needed to say it. It came out between sobs and felt like a weight lifted from her. She cried quietly as her sister fell silent. Tegan continued to cry, and the longer Sara didn’t say anything, the angrier Tegan got. 

“Sara! Sara, fucking answer me,” Tegan yelled. “I know you’re there.” How could she just sit there on the phone and listen to her cry this way?! If Sara called her crying about a nightmare, Tegan would coo and comfort her and tell her how special and loved she was. She would never make her sit in this agony. 

“Please, Sasa.”

“…I’m sorry Tegan,” came her sister’s voice, finally, breaking the silence like a burst of light. “I had a bad dream too, I wish I could be there to comfort you.” Her soft and sweet tone washed over Tegan and made her weeks of drinking in torment disappear entirely. All that was left was Sara’s voice over the phone.

“Really?” Tegan asked quietly.

“Yes, yes really,” Sara murmured softly. She shared a soothing memory of their childhood, when Sara would comfort Tegan during thunderstorms. It felt like yesterday to Tegan.

She laughed and bit her lip, feeling the wetness that had been spreading since the moment she’d heard Sara’s voice soaking her bedsheets. “…Have you been thinking about me, Sara?”

She heard Sara gulp. Tegan knew she had been thinking of her. The deep, animal desires they share with each other were never rivaled. Tegan knew from the So Jealous tour that Sara’s sex life with Emy wasn’t the same as with her. She knew Sara could only go so long until the side that desperately needed Tegan took over. “You know I have,” she confirmed, in a husky, stern tone. Tegan suppressed a groan.

“You could call me,” Tegan said in a small voice. She missed her best friend. “You only ever send me demos lately. It feels like…” she sighed. “Like I don’t even know you right now.”

As soon as she had said it she regretted it. She should've kept talking about sex, it was harder for Sara to ignore that. But wearing her heart on her sleeve… Sara was too resentful of the many times she’d shared her feelings with Tegan and been shot down. They had hurt each other in so many ways that when one of them was the weak one, the other one had to be the one to turn away. They knew the drill. 

“I can’t talk to you, Tegan.” It was cold, it cut through her.

“Why not?” Tegan asked, if only to get Sara angry again. Tell me, tell me how bad we are. Tell me why we’re disgusting and immoral and we need to separate ourselves or we’ll ruin our careers. Tell me you moved away to get away from me. Scream at me. 

“You know what we are.”

With a click, Montreal was gone, and Tegan was alone again in her still, dark room. She got up to look in the mirror, stared at her overgrown hair, the tattoos that made her different from Sara, her labret. 

Sara could hurt her all she wanted right now, could put her away on the shelf and not think about Calgary or Vancouver or all the places that were haunted by their love. But in two short weeks, Tegan would be at her door, just in time to get ready to go to Portland.

Whether either of them were ready or not.


End file.
